Emergency Command

An emergency on board is, by nature, several problems arriving at once — the alarm itself, the people, the ship, and everyone ashore who now needs to know. Command's value is not doing all of this personally; it is holding a fixed order so the ship's response does not collapse into whoever shouts loudest getting attended to first.

Raise the alarm at the correct level for what has actually happened, so the right people respond in the right way. Account for everyone — a muster with a genuine headcount against the crew and passenger list, not an assumption that everyone heard the alarm and made their way there. Contain whatever is making the situation worse: stop the engine if it is driving flooding, close a door if it is feeding a fire, isolate a system if it is the source of the danger. Only once the immediate danger is contained does assessment properly begin — working out what has actually happened before deciding what to do about it. Inform runs alongside all of this, not after it: the moment enough is known to be useful, it goes outward.

This is also where bridge and engine-room resource management earns its keep: a competent team, briefed on the sequence in advance through drills, needs a great deal less direction in the moment than one hearing it for the first time. The master who has drilled this sequence is, in the first ninety seconds, mostly listening to reports rather than issuing orders.

Grounding and collision share a structural feature that trips up an otherwise sound officer: the instinct to undo the event mechanically, at once, before its consequences are understood.

After a grounding, the seabed is, for the moment, doing useful work — it is holding the hull in a fixed position and may be plugging a breach that would otherwise be open to the sea. Going astern to refloat before that breach and the ship's residual stability and strength are understood risks pulling the hull off whatever is containing the damage, at exactly the moment the vessel's trim, list and freeboard have already changed from the passage condition. Ships have been lost this way — sitting stable aground, then unstable once free. The correct first response is a full sounding round of tanks and compartments, feeding a residual stability and strength assessment, with the state of the tide treated as one more input rather than a reason to hurry: a rising tide gives more margin to wait, a falling one narrows it, but neither changes the requirement to know what has actually been damaged first.

Collision carries the same principle sideways. Two ships in contact are, in the seconds after impact, often still functioning as a temporary plug for each other's damage below the waterline. Manoeuvring away immediately — even with good intentions, to reduce further contact — can open that damage to the sea on either ship. The requirement is to assess both vessels, not just your own, before altering the geometry between them, and to remain in a position to render assistance until the other vessel's condition and intentions are confirmed. Exchanging full particulars — name, port of registry, position, and the nature of any damage — is part of that same duty, not a separate administrative step to be done later.

Flooding and fire are both, at heart, a race between something spreading and the crew's ability to draw a boundary around it — and both end, in the worst case, at the same last resort.

Flooding is fought in a fixed order: locate the source, isolate it by closing the watertight and weathertight boundaries around it, then pump. Pumping started before isolation is largely wasted effort against an open source; a boundary closed around a flooded space stops the water spreading even before a single pump is running. As isolation takes hold, the assessment keeps running in parallel — free surface in a partly flooded compartment, and the weight and position of the water now aboard, both erode stability in ways that a healthy ship's officer needs to keep re-checking rather than assuming stays fixed at the first reading.

• Boundary cooling — keeping the steel around a fire below ignition temperature so it cannot spread by conduction into the next space.
• Isolating fuel and ventilation — removing what is feeding the fire, which does more to control it than any amount of direct attack.
• Account for all — confirming no one is trapped in or near the space before it is sealed and starved of air.
• Fixed system last — a fixed smothering system is only released once the space is confirmed boundary-cooled, ventilation and fuel are isolated, and everyone is out and accounted for, because the system works by removing the air as well as the fire.

Abandoning ship sits outside this sequence entirely, as the last resort rather than a response in its own right. A stable, intact hull is nearly always the safer place to be than open survival craft in a seaway, so the decision is only taken when remaining aboard has become the greater danger — uncontrolled and worsening flooding, fire that cannot be contained, or structural failure. Once taken, it follows its own drilled sequence: muster, EPIRB and SART activated, survival craft launched, and a headcount taken and re-taken until it is certain no one has been left behind.

Once the ship itself is being fought for, a second job starts running in parallel: telling the right people, in the right order, without any of it falling on the one person also commanding the casualty.

Distress or urgency traffic goes out first, because it is what brings help — the coastal state's rescue coordination centre needs real-time information to task assistance, and delay here is rarely recoverable later. Behind that sits a wider circle, each with a different reason to be told: the company and the designated person ashore run the shoreside response and can call on resources the ship cannot reach herself; the flag state has a statutory interest in a casualty to one of its ships; classification society needs to know promptly where structural or stability implications may affect the ship's certification; P&I needs early notice because how a casualty is handled from the first hour shapes cover and liability later; and charterers and the agent need enough practical information to manage the commercial and port-side consequences.

What ties the whole workstream together is the log. Delegate one person, early, whose only job is writing down what happens and when — actions taken, reports made, times of each alarm and each order. Memory reconstructed after the event, under scrutiny, is never as reliable as a contemporaneous record, and an investigation months later runs almost entirely on whatever timeline the ship actually kept at the time.

Once the immediate danger is under control, the ship's second obligation begins — preserving an accurate record of what happened, because the investigation that follows will run entirely on what survives from these hours.

The voyage data recorder is the first priority, because it is built to overwrite itself: it records on a continuous loop, and without a deliberate action to save the relevant period, the data from the incident is simply recorded over by ordinary operation as the voyage continues. Saving it is not optional housekeeping — it is often the single most objective account of the sequence of events, and once it is gone, it cannot be recreated from memory or from the log.

Around that, the same discipline applies to everything else that can be disturbed by time or by ordinary shipboard routine: photograph damage while it is still in its post-incident state, secure charts, logbooks and sounding records rather than let them be updated over in the normal course of watchkeeping, and write down the sequence of events while it is fresh, before individual accounts start to drift apart from each other under the ordinary pressure of retelling a stressful event.

Media and next-of-kin enquiries are handled the same way regardless of how minor or serious the incident feels from the bridge: they go through the company, not through individual crew members, and ideally through a single named spokesperson. This is not about concealing anything — it is about making sure families and the public receive one consistent, accurate account rather than several partial and possibly contradictory ones arriving from different directions at the worst possible time. Post-incident reporting follows the same logic outward: an internal report to the company sits alongside whatever statutory reporting the flag and coastal state require, and the ship's own preserved record — VDR, log, photographs, and the sequence written down early — is what any subsequent investigation will actually be built on.

Both walkthroughs below sit at command level rather than at the level of a single calculation: a realistic casualty develops, several strands need holding at once, and the required answer is the decision a candidate would have to state and defend in an oral exam.

Worked example 1

Grounding — holding the sequence when the instinct is to go astern

Your bulk carrier, laden, touches bottom at 2210 on a falling tide while making 10 knots up a buoyed channel. The vessel stops dead, listing slightly. The OOW's hand is already on the engine telegraph, ready to go astern and pull her off before the tide falls further. As master, you are on the bridge within a minute of the alarm.

Given

• Bulk carrier, laden, aground on a falling tide, position fixed by GPS and echo sounder • Contact made at 10 knots; engines now stopped, slight list • 22 crew mustered and accounted for at emergency stations, no injuries reported • Initial visual check: no flooding visible on deck; internal sounding round not yet complete

1. The instinct to react to the ship is strong.

   But the first job is people, not propulsion. Hold the sequence: alarm already sounded, muster and account for all 22 before anything else is decided.

2. Refuse the OOW's request to go astern.

   Grounded, falling tide, breach status unknown →engine movement withheld pending assessment

   The vessel is resting on the bottom, which is itself holding closed whatever damage has been done. Pulling her off blind, with the extent of any breach still unknown, can open that damage to the sea at a moment when her stability and freeboard are no longer what they were on passage.

3. Order a full sounding round of tanks and compartments.

   Sounding round results, all tanks and compartments

   Compartment	Finding
   No.1 double-bottom tank	as before, no change
   Forward peak tank	as before, no change
   No.2 hold bilge	dry, no change
   No.3 hold bilge	rising slowly

   Feeding the results straight into a residual stability and strength check before any further decision is made on the engines.

4. The rise in No.3 hold bilge points to a probable breach there.

   Isolate that bilge line, keep monitoring the rate of rise, and hold position rather than attempting to refloat on this tide — a confirmed breach changes the whole calculation of when, and whether, to move.

5. With the ship's own situation now understood.

   Widen the circle: notify the company/DPA, flag and coastal state with position, condition and intentions, and prepare a considered plan for the next tide rather than an immediate attempt.

AnswerDo not attempt to refloat. Muster and account for all 22 crew, isolate the making-water hold, complete the sounding round and stability assessment, and report to the company/DPA and coastal state before any engine movement is considered.

The trap: going astern immediately to “get off” before the extent of bottom damage and residual stability are known — this is the single action most likely to turn a contained grounding into an uncontrolled flooding casualty.

Worked example 2

Collision — the duty that continues after the ships part

Your general cargo ship, in restricted visibility at 0230, makes contact with a fishing vessel crossing close ahead. Both vessels were under way at the time of contact. Your ship sustains a gash above the waterline on the port bow; the fishing vessel shows no distress signal and appears to be drawing away into the darkness under her own power. The OOW asks whether to resume the passage now that the ships have separated.

Given

• General cargo ship, 14 crew, restricted visibility, 0230 • Contact with a fishing vessel on a crossing course; both vessels under way at the time • Own ship: a gash above the waterline on the port bow, sea state moderate • Other vessel shows no distress signal, appears under way, drawing clear into the darkness

1. Sound the alarm.

   Muster and account for all 14 crew, and check for injuries and immediate seaworthiness before anything else is decided.

2. The fact that the two ships have physically parted does not end your obligation to the other vessel.

   Duty after collision: render assistance so far as can be done without serious danger to own ship — independent of fault

   Stand by and establish her condition before resuming passage — the duty to render assistance after a collision holds independently of any question of fault.

3. Raise the fishing vessel on VHF.

   Exchange vessel names, positions and intentions, and offer assistance. Keep the exchange factual — no admission or apportionment of blame is made over the radio.

4. Below decks, sound round the forward compartments to confirm the gash is genuinely confined above the waterline and not admitting water, and have it assessed whether the bow structure needs shoring before the passage continues.

   Forward sounding round after contact

   Compartment	Finding
   Forward peak tank	dry, no change
   No.1 hold bilge	dry, no change
   Collision bulkhead area	sound, no deformation felt

5. Notify the company/DPA and the coastal state with position.

   Time and both vessels' particulars, and begin preserving the VDR data and photographing the damage before the passage resumes.

AnswerStand by until the fishing vessel confirms she needs no further assistance, then resume passage. Report the collision to the DPA and coastal state with full particulars, and preserve the VDR recording and photograph the damage before anything is overwritten or lost.

The trap: treating physical separation as the end of the incident and getting back on passage before the other vessel's condition is confirmed — leaving too early is one of the most heavily penalised failures a collision inquiry finds.